'Withnail and I' et al.: Reflections on Beckettian 'Buddy Narratives'

Two peripheral characters ponder and wander aimlessly, for want of a purposeful existence. This would be my one-line synopsis for Stoppard's wonderful Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, but it seems to me that it might just as well describe some other cast-iron favourites of mine, whether it's Withnail and I (Withnail and Marwood), Sideways (Miles and Jack), or (with rather less wandering about), Waiting for Godot (Vladimir and Estragon).

I could wax lyrical about the sublime Sideways, and, among friends, strangers and 'friends-to-be', casual references to W & I are a kind of communicative currency, a reminder that we're all comedy fans 'in the know'. But it's the pathos and poignancy of these narratives that resonate most of all. On a personal level, I can identify with the 'not-quite-friendship' of, in particular, Marwood and Withnail (pronounced 'Withnul', as the more pedantic fans, such as myself, like to point out). It recalls more than one episode in my life. It captures that fraught realm between the love and resentment we feel towards the people we find ourselves drawn to, inexorably, but wherein, at the same time, the reality of frustrated ambitions is amplified.

And, for me, the comic catharthis and emotional punch of Withnail and I and Sideways act as a kind of imaginative bridge to and from Beckett's and Stoppard's plays and the weightier philosophical questions they embody.

Finally, not least because Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson co-starred in the 1991 West End production of Waiting for Godot, surely Bottom's Richard Richard and Eddie Hitler deserve a mention too? Then again, perhaps not.